AustLit

NB: Information in this Unit Outline is subject to change prior to commencement of semester

Children's and adolescent fiction is an important and integral part of the Creative Industries for both writers and those wishing to increase their knowledge of contemporary (and historical) cultural practice.

Aims

This unit aims to acquaint you with (mostly) Australian childrens and adolescent fiction within its cultural and historical contexts. By indicating the increasing diversity and plurality of this kind of fiction, it exposes you to an exciting and growing area of literacy studies.

Objectives

On completion of this unit you would be able to:

1. read, understand and critically appreciate representative texts drawn from Australian children's and adolescent fiction of the past and present.

2. understand and appreciate some of the seminal periods of development in Australian children's and adolescent fiction since white colonisation.

3. consider and investigate the ways in which social, cultural and political issues impinge upon the production of children's and adolescent fiction.

4. produce research papers of a critical and creative nature appropriate to undergraduate studies in the Creative Industries.

Content

The unit content addresses a number of key texts and literary genres in children's and adolescent fiction. The texts set for close study are discussed in terms of their social, political and cultural contexts. Emphasis is placed firstly upon the fiction produced at the time of emergent nationalisation in Australia in the 1890s but the bulk of the unit engages with the significant and contemporaneous development of the late twentieth century in Australia, England and the United States. The unit explores discourses about gender and sexuality; class; social place; power and subjectivity; race, especially in the relationship between empire and colonised; the family and home. It utilises methods of literacy theory including post-colonialism, New Historicism and feminism.